


long & lost

by leslieknopedanascully



Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: But also, Canon Compliant, During Canon, M/M, Pre-Canon, post episode 80
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-09 08:35:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18634597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leslieknopedanascully/pseuds/leslieknopedanascully
Summary: “How long has it been since you got a haircut, Sammy?”Lily looked at him with a mixture of pity and sympathy. Somehow the concern in her voice made Sammy feel even more uneasy than when she set him off with her incisive glares and cutting words. He stared down at his coffee mug.“I think you already know.”When Lily tries to convince him to get a haircut Sammy finds himself reflecting on painful memories. (post ep80 with pre-canon flashbacks)





	long & lost

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is dedicated to my wonderful friend, Karuna, who introduced me to KFAM and whose headcanon about Sammy's manbun inspired this fic.

Sammy and Ben’s apartment usually was not this quiet at 1AM. Sammy sat at the kitchen table, his hands wrapped around a steaming mug of coffee as he half-heartedly scanned _The King Falls Gazette_. The crickets chirping outside were his only companions. Though Sammy found it strange that Ben was not up and about, he was grateful for a few moments of solitude. Ever since Lily moved in, peace and quiet was hard to come by.

Sure enough, a rustling from the living room and the sound of footsteps entering the kitchen soon interrupted Sammy’s peaceful morning.

“Morning,” Lily said, barely glancing at Sammy as she made a beeline for the coffeemaker.

Sammy didn’t bother to suppress his sigh of disappointment at her interruption.

“It’s not morning for you,” he said as he watched Lily pull a mug from the cabinet and help herself to the remainder of the coffee. “You’re not going to sleep if you drink that.”

“Please, I need at _least_ three cups before I even start to feel the caffeine.” Lily sat down across from Sammy. “Besides, it’s not like I’ll be able to sleep anyway.”

Though she muttered that last comment into her coffee mug, Sammy knew he ought to acknowledge it. At the very least offer some degree of comfort by admitting that he understood. That most days he either slept for eleven hours straight or not at all.

Instead, he said, “If you’re going to finish the pot, you could at least make another one. That was supposed to be for Ben because, you know, he actually has a reason to be awake right now.”

“The pipsqueak left hours ago for Emily’s. He said he’d probably go straight from there to the station.” Lily took a sip of her coffee and flashed Sammy a sardonic little smile. “It’s just you and me, Shotgun.”

“Wonderful,” Sammy muttered.

The pair sat in silence for several very long minutes. Sammy stared into the dark depths of his coffee mug, avoiding Lily’s eyes. He hated that incisive way she looked at him, as if she were midway through interviewing him and on the brink of tricking him into revealing all his dirty little secrets. Sammy suspected he knew how it felt to be one of the many corrupt politicians or crooked businessmen exposed by Lily’s journalism. Just sitting across from her put Sammy on edge. In his uneasiness, he began to mess with his hair. The bun he had thrown his hair into when he woke less than an hour ago had fallen low and loose on his head, so he started to pull it out to remake it. But halfway through the hair tie caught in a tangle of knots. Lily chuckled as she watched Sammy struggle and fail to extricate the elastic band from his mess of hair.

“Oh, shut up,” Sammy said.

Lily stood and walked around the table behind Sammy’s chair.

“Let me help,” she said, swatting Sammy’s hand away from the mass of tangles. She placed one hand on top of Sammy’s head and with the other she gripped the hair tie, which she wrested free with a quick, violent yank.

Sammy yelped in pain. “ _Fuck._ ”

“Like ripping off a band-aid,” Lily said.

“Yeah not exactly,” Sammy said, rubbing his sore scalp.

“For the record, _this,_ ” Lily held up the hair tie, which still had strands of Sammy’s hair woven around the black elastic. “Is disgusting.” She then grabbed a handful of Sammy’s hair, holding it so he could see the knots and stringy split ends. “So is this. When’s the last time you got a haircut?”

Sammy knocked Lily’s hand away and grabbed the hair tie from her.

“My hair’s fine,” he said as looped his mane back into its rightful bun.

“Your split ends have split ends.”

“It’s _fine_ , Lily.”

“Look, I know you’re going through a hard time, but I think you can manage to get your ass to the King Falls Barbershop and have them cut off your dead ends.”

“You know I’ve never been to a barber before, and I don’t see any reason to start now.”

Lily paused for a beat as these words sunk in.

“ _Never?_ Not even when you were in L.A.?”

Sammy only sighed.

Lily rested one hand on the back of his chair and the other on the kitchen table, looming over him. When she spoke her voice was level but insistent, demanding an answer even though her next words were a statement. Now she really was interviewing him.

“You didn’t always have that manbun, Shotgun.”

“How would you know?” Sammy shot back.

Sammy could have sworn Lily flinched at his words, but when she spoke her voice didn’t waver.

“Ever heard of the Internet, old man? Photography?”

“ _Stalker._ ”

“Don’t flatter yourself. I kept tabs on _Jack_. I couldn’t help it if pictures of you popped up on his Facebook feed.”

“I’m done talking about this.”

Lily scoffed. “You always shut down as soon as I mention his name. When are you going to fucking talk to me about it?”

“For fucks sake, Lily. What do you want me to say?” _That I don’t sleep either? That I miss him? That I blame myself for everything that happened?_

“Anything! Literally anything!”

“God…it’s too early for this. I’m tired; I have to be at the station soon, can we _please_ just do this later?”     

Lily sighed. When she spoke her tone, though still insistent, softened.

“How long has it been since you got a haircut, Sammy?”

She looked at him with a mixture of pity and sympathy. Somehow the concern in her voice made Sammy feel even more uneasy than when she set him off with her incisive glares and cutting words. He stared down at his coffee mug.

“I think you already know.”

 

____

 

During those early days in Florida the longing between Sammy and Jack hung on them like the humidity that the fans in the radio station could never quite dissipate. Always present and heavy on their skin, but unseen and accepted with little question as the norm. On one particular muggy evening, Sammy wiped the sweat from his neck as he waited outside the door to Jack and Lily’s apartment. Damp tendrils of hair peeked out from his baseball cap and clung to his forehead in sweaty curls. His head was hot and itchy, and as Lily let him into the apartment, he removed his cap and ran his hand through his hair, giving his suffocating scalp a chance to breathe.

When Sammy entered, Jack glanced up at him from where he lay sprawled out on the couch, one leg hooked over the back of the couch, the other extended over the side, his head nearly dangling off the cushion. As soon as Jack’s eyes fell on Sammy’s shaggy hair and the pronounced crease imprinted by the baseball cap, he laughed.

“Bad hair day, Sammy?”

“Shut up,” Sammy said. But he said it with a smile, not at all irritated by Jack’s teasing. In those days, Jack was incapable of irritating him.

“You do look like you could use a haircut,” Lily said, eyeing Sammy with an arched eyebrow.

Jack was sitting up now, though still not sitting properly—one leg tucked under his butt and the other propped up on the coffee table in front of the couch.

“There’s a Great Clips down the street that does a pretty good job considering how cheap it is,” he said.

Starting to feel self-conscious about his hair, Sammy placed his cap back on and plopped down on the couch next to Jack.

“That’s okay. My mom will take care of it next time I visit home.”

“Aw, little Sammy can’t get his haircut without his mommy holding his hand,” Lily mocked, sticking out her lip in an exaggerated pout. She was sitting on the arm of the chair across the couch, arms crossed and a teasing glint in her eye.

“Don’t listen to her,” Jack said. “I can go with you if you want. There’s also another place a couple blocks over that’s a little nicer, but not too pricey. I could get you an appointment there.”

“Sammy’s a big boy,” Lily said, “I think he can manage to make his own hair appointment. Just because I indulge _you_ when you force me make your dentist appointments—”

“I do not _force_ you to make my dentist appointments—”

“If I didn’t make your dentist appointments then you’d never go!”

“Yeah, because I don’t need to go!”

“You do need to go! You just don’t _like_ to go.”

“Okay! Okay!” Sammy laughed as he attempted to quiet his two friends. “I appreciate the offer, Jack, but my mom doesn’t make my appointments. She _cuts_ my hair. She’s a hairdresser. So even a cheap haircut feels like a waste of money when my mom can just do it for free. Anyway, my hair’s really not that bad.”

“Oh, it is,” Jack said.

In one swift motion Jack knocked the cap off Sammy’s head. Sammy managed to catch it, but when he tried to put the cap back on, Jack snatched it out of his hands.

“If your hair’s fine, then why the hat?” Jack said.

“Because you’re making me self-conscious!” Sammy held out his hand. “Give it back.”

“Just give him the damn hat,” Lily said with an exasperated sigh.

“If he wants it, he can get it from me,” Jack said, holding the cap above his head.

Lily started to say something about how even Sammy wasn’t immature enough to be baited by such a childish taunt, but Sammy hardly heard her as he lunged at Jack. Sammy, the taller of the two, easily snatched it back, but Jack (thanks to years of playing rugby) was stronger and more agile. He tackled Sammy, almost causing them both to fall off the couch. Though taken off guard by Jack’s retaliation, Sammy had the presence of mind to fling his arm over the arm of the couch, holding the hat just out of Jack’s reach. Undeterred, Jack grabbed onto Sammy’s hair to steady himself as he reached for the cap. Sammy exclaimed in surprise and dropped the hat.

“You wouldn’t survive two seconds playing rugby with this hair,” Jack said, giving Sammy’s hair a playful tug.

Sammy was winded, partly from tussling with Jack, but mainly from his increasing awareness of Jack’s closeness. His knees dug into Sammy’s thighs, his fingers were still entangled in his hair. Sammy sweated from the warmth of Jack’s body heat radiating over him.

Though breathless, Sammy managed to say, “I think this would warrant a red card.”

“First of all, red cards are a _soccer_ thing. Second of all,” Jack grinned, “it would take a lot more than a little hair pulling to get a foul in rugby.”

“Oh yeah? Is that a challenge?”

Before Jack could answer, a pillow collided with his face.

“Are you two idiots finished?” Lily said, as the young men jumped apart from each other.

“In case you two have forgotten,” Lily said, “we have a show to plan.”

“What’s there to plan?” Jack said. “You already have the news segment prepared, and I scheduled the interview with the guy who fought off the gator in his pool. The rest of the time you guys can just take listener calls. The show will be _fine_ ; fixing Sammy’s hair is much higher on the list of priorities. And if we leave now, we can get to Great Clips before it closes.”

“My hair isn’t that bad!”

“If you don’t get it cut right now I swear to god I’ll cut it myself.”

“It’s _fine_. I’ll be able to go home in a couple weeks—”

"A couple _weeks_? Your hair will be in your eyes by then! We’re going now.”

“I think Sammy can at least wait until tomorrow,” Lily said.

“I’m not paying for a haircut!” Sammy protested. “It can wait.”

“Fine,” Jack said, moving as if to get up off the couch. “I’m getting my scissors.”

“Oh, come on, you’re not really going to cut my hair.”

“You wanna bet?”

“Don’t test him, Sammy,” Lily said.

“Lily can tell you that I am _very_ experienced in cutting hair.”

Lily rolled her eyes.

“He’s talking about that one April Fool’s day when we were kids and he thought it would be funny to cut off one of my pigtails.”

“Half her hair was as short as mine and the other half went down to her back,” Jack said. “She looked hideous.”

“I’m still stuck on the mental image of Lily with pigtails,” Sammy said, laughing.

“Oh, shut up, I was _nine_. Mom took me to get my hair cut that day and the lady had to cut it so short that Jack and I basically had the same hairstyle for a few months.”

“The day after it happened some kid at school made fun of Lily’s hair and she punched him in the nose,” Jack said.

“I’m surprised I didn’t punch _you_ in the nose.”

“You tried, but I ran and hid under my bed for several hours until I was sure Mom and Dad had cooled you down.”

“Anyway,” Lily said, “my point is that I wouldn’t let this idiot anywhere near my hair with a pair scissors.”

“Well, I’m definitely not going to Great Clips,” Sammy said, “so I don’t know if I have much of a choice.”

“Oh no, you don’t,” Jack said, grinning.

Once it became apparent that Jack’s threat to cut Sammy’s hair wasn’t a joke, and that Sammy wasn’t backing down on his anti-Great Clips stance, Lily made them set up their makeshift beauty parlor in the bathroom.

“I don’t want to find Sammy’s hair in my couch three months from now,” Lily sternly explained when Jack had returned to the couch after retrieving a pair of scissors from the kitchen.

Jack pulled a chair from the kitchen into the apartment’s cramped bathroom. He positioned it in front of the sink and beckoned Sammy to sit. There was so little space in the shoebox-sized room that Sammy had to sit slightly askew so rather than sitting with his knees pressed up against the powder blue wall, he was able to extend his long legs out the open door. The bathroom smelled of shampoo and the threat of mildew, the latter of which was also apparent in the graying grout between the white tiled floor.

Jack sat perched on the edge of the sink, one leg dangling above the floor, the other hooked around the chair for stability. Sammy was acutely aware of Jack’s foot resting on the edge of the chair, brushing against his thigh. The mesh fabric of Jack’s basketball shorts tickled Sammy’s bare arm, causing him to shift in his seat. Jack sensed Sammy’s unease, but misinterpreted its cause.

“Relax,” he said. He placed his hands on Sammy’s tense shoulders, a gesture which did very little to help Sammy relax. “It’s just hair. If I fuck up, you can just shave it all off.”

“Oh thanks, very reassuring.”

“Hey, watch the sarcasm, Sammy. You don’t want to insult the guy with the scissors.” Sammy suddenly felt Jack’s fingers in his hair, pushing all of hair to the middle of his head. “You know I always wondered what you would look like with a mohawk.”

“I think I’d be better off bald.”

Jack laughed, and at that sound Sammy finally felt at ease.

“Ok, here we go,” Jack said, and in the next moment Sammy could hear the _snip_ of the scissors.

“Seriously though,” Jack said, “I’m going to do my best, but, like…it might not look _great_ …”

“Don’t worry. Like you said, it’s just hair.”

There was a pause in the conversation as Jack continued to snip, snip, snip away at Sammy’s hair.

“I wonder if the new intern would still flirt with you if you were bald,” Jack said suddenly.

 _"What?_ ”

"Chrissy. The new intern.”

"She doesn’t flirt with me.”

Jack scoffed. “Yeah, okay. Then why does she always have a pot of coffee ready for you in the break room?”

“You’re being ridiculous; that coffee is for everyone.”

“Oh, it’s for you. That week you called in sick? I had to make the coffee myself every day that you were gone.”

“I’m sure that was a coincidence. I think you’re reading too far into things.”

“And _I_ think you’re the most oblivious person I’ve ever met.”

“I’m not oblivious!”

“If you weren’t oblivious, then you would know that when you laugh at her jokes, she thinks that you’re flirting back.”

“I do _not_ flirt with her.”

“There’s no need to get defensive. She’s nice, and she’s clearly into you. If you asked her out, she would definitely say yes.”

"I’m not going to ask her out. She…She’s not my type.”

“Your _type_?” Jack laughed. “You have a _type_? Please elaborate; what is your _type_?”

“That…that’s not what I meant.” Sammy’s face reddened. His stomach clenched as it always did whenever anyone asked him about women. “I’m just…I’m not into Chrissy, okay?”

“Uh-huh. Sure.”

“Why don’t _you_ ask her out if you think she’s so great?”

The words came out a bit harsher than Sammy had intended, and he worried that maybe he was coming across as a little _too_ defensive. But Jack just chuckled and muttered to himself, so quietly that Sammy could barely make out the words:

“ _So_ fucking oblivious.”

           

 

The stifling humidity of Florida eventually gave way to balmy days in California. One mild winter morning the curtains on the open bedroom window billowed as a cool breeze wafted into the room, bringing with it the thrum of L.A. traffic. Sammy woke to see that Jack was already awake, propped up against the pillows, scribbling in that fucking black notebook that he always seemed to have on him. Sammy pretended not to notice that as soon as Sammy rustled awake, Jack snapped the notebook closed and discarded it on the bedside table.

Several weeks earlier Sammy had confronted Jack about the notebook. He voiced his concerns about how Jack’s obsession with King Falls was getting out of hand, disrupting Jack’s life— _their_ life. Jack had stopped prepping the show, he stopped going to rugby practice, he would have stopped eating too if it weren’t for Sammy pushing a plate of food in front of him three times a day. But Jack wouldn’t listen to Sammy; he accused him of overreacting, said that he didn’t understand. Just weeks earlier they had been discussing marriage, now they were having their first truly big fight, the type that led to raised voices and slamming doors.

Things had cooled down since then. The morning after the fight they had both apologized, but their truce was tenuous. Jack still refused to recognize that his obsession with the paranormal had become unhealthy, and Sammy was scared that bringing the topic up again would drive Jack away. Though what scared Sammy more was Jack’s tunnel vision. How even when he wasn’t reading his paranormal books or watching ghost hunting videos on YouTube, he was only half-there. How often in the middle of a perfectly normal conversation with Sammy, Jack would get this faraway look in his eye, stop talking mid-sentence, and wander off to write something down in his notebook.

But on this particular morning, Jack seemed able to put aside King Falls for a moment, and Sammy didn’t want to waste this increasingly rare instance of lucidity by arguing.

“Good morning,” Sammy mumbled.

Jack looked down at Sammy and laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Sammy said.

“Your hair.” Jack slipped further under the covers so he was eye-to-eye with Sammy. “It’s sticking straight up.”

He grabbed the tuft of Sammy’s hair that was sticking up and gave it a gentle tug. Sammy swatted Jack’s hand away and attempted to flatten his hair.

“Is that better?”

Again, Jack laughed.

“It popped right back up.”

“Is it really that bad?”

“You look pretty stupid.” Jack ran his hands through Sammy’s hair, twirling it around his fingers. “I didn’t notice until now, but your hair’s gotten so long. Funny how these things sneak up on you when you see someone every day.”

 _You haven’t been noticing much of anything lately_ , Sammy thought. He swallowed the temptation to start a fight, and instead said, “Can you cut it for me today?”

“I don’t know, I think I like it longer.”

“I thought you said I looked stupid.”

“You do, but I’m kind of into it.”

With his fingers tangled in Sammy’s hair, Jack pulled Sammy close for a long kiss.

“See?” Jack said once he pulled away. “Gives me something to hold onto.” He rolled on top of Sammy and grinned. “Just let me play with it a little longer before I cut it.”

Jack kissed Sammy again, and Sammy held him tight, as if by clinging to Jack he could freeze this moment and live in it forever.

 

____

 

Lily plunked a hair brush and a pair of scissors down on the kitchen table.

“This,” she said, pointing to the brush, “is called a _hairbrush_. When you pull it through your hair, it gets rid of all the tangles.”

“I know what a hairbrush is.”

“Really? _Really_? You’re actually going to try to convince me of that after I nearly yanked out half your hair removing that hair tie?”

Sammy sighed.

“Can we just get this over with?”

“Gladly.”

Starting at the stringy ends of Sammy’s hair, Lily began the slow process of brushing. For a few moments all that could be heard was the tearing sound of the brush yanking through knots of hair and Sammy’s measured breathing as he tried to hold back exclamations of pain when Lily pulled a little too hard. Just as Sammy thought to himself how relieved he was at Lily’s silence, she broke it by saying:

“When did you and Jack get engaged?”

Again, Sammy sighed.

“I really don’t want to talk about it.”

“It’s an easy question.”

It really wasn’t; just at the mention of the engagement Sammy could already feel the lump forming in his throat, the burning feeling behind his eyes. But after a long pause, he managed to say, “November. A little over a month before he disappeared.”

“When in November?”

“Why does it matter?”

“Some fiancé you are,” Lily muttered. “Can’t even remember when you got engaged.”

“Fuck you, Lily.” Sammy scoffed. “And you wonder why I don’t want to talk to you.”

“I’m sorry. I just…” Lily sighed. Sammy realized that she had stopped brushing his hair. “The last time I talked to Jack was that November. Thanksgiving.”

It took a minute for Sammy to process Lily’s words. “What…what did he say?”

“Nothing about getting engaged. Mostly a bunch of fucking gibberish about  
King Falls. He wanted me to go there with him; he claimed he had all this evidence of paranormal shit and wanted to investigate. He thought I could do a _Wright On_ episode on it. Of course I said no. We argued, I hung up. But looking back…well, it doesn’t matter now. It’s just that he didn’t sound like he was in his right mind. It was like—”

“Like he was already gone?”

“Yeah.”

“I know what you mean.”

Silence fell over the pair again, and Lily resumed brushing Sammy’s hair. She had straightened out most of the tangles, and the brush passed easily through his hair. She then set down the brush and ran her fingers through his hair, and the unexpectedness of the gesture made him shiver, something that did not go unnoticed by Lily.

“What? Don’t trust me cutting your hair?”

“I’ll be honest, I’m really not thrilled about the thought of you holding scissors so close to my neck.”

Lily picked up the weapon in question and held it next to Sammy’s ear, snapping the scissors open and shut.

“Don’t give me any ideas.”

Lily cut Sammy’s hair the same way she did most things: brusquely and efficiently. With little regard for style, she cut straight across, keeping as much length as possible while still cutting off all the dead ends. She then did a bit of trimming to ensure that Sammy’s hair was even, but the whole affair took less than ten minutes.

“There you go,” Lily said. “You’re not going to get any modeling jobs, but it’s good enough for radio.”

“Thanks,” Sammy said, surprised to realize that he meant it.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.”

Lily grabbed her coffee mug, which was still half-full, and popped it in the microwave to reheat it.

“I’m not cleaning up that mess, though,” Lily said, gesturing at the pile of hair under Sammy’s chair. “That’s all you.”

A retort reflexively flew to Sammy’s lips, but he decided to keep it to himself. He could clean up his own hair.

“I’ll do it after the show. I should really get going; I’m already running late.”

“Better hurry, can’t leave the little one alone in the station without adult supervision.”

“ _Lily_.”

Lily sighed. “I know, I know. I promise I’ll be nicer once I’ve finished my coffee.”

Steaming mug in hand, Lily returned to her seat across from Sammy. As she sat, Sammy happened to catch her eye. It was the first time since she had first arrived in town that he really, _fully_ met her gaze, and in one crushing moment he remembered why he had been avoiding it for so long.

Lily had Jack’s eyes. Big and brown and too painful for Sammy to look at directly. But almost more painful than the similarity between the two siblings faces were the differences. Deep purple crescents shadowed Lily’s eyes. The lines that creased her forehead revealed just how heavily the last three years had weighed on her.

“Lily, um…” Sammy started to say. The lump was forming in his throat again. “It was after Thanksgiving. The proposal. The last day of November, actually. I asked. He didn’t see it coming. Just…just thought you should know.”

She was quiet for a long moment and the silence nearly sent Sammy into a breakdown. The feeling of tears forming hot behind his eyes activated his fight or flight instincts—he was not about to let Lily Wright see him cry, damnit. But before he could decide between cutting the unbearable silence with sarcasm or leaving the kitchen to crawl back into bed, Lily surprised him by saying, without a trace of sarcasm:

“Thanks. Um. For telling me that.”

Sammy dared to again meet her eyes, but this time it was Lily who looked away.

“I should go to bed,” Lily said. “Gotta be at the station early.”

Just as Lily started to stand, her phone rang.

“It’s Ben,” she said.

“Oh, _fuck_.” Sammy grabbed his phone, which he always kept on silent, to see that he had twenty missed texts and six voicemails all from Ben. The show had started fifteen minutes ago. The threat of tears disappeared as panic overtook Sammy.

“Tell him I’m too sick to come in,” Sammy said as Lily answered her phone.

“Hey, Ben…Sorry I can’t put Sammy on the phone. He just left the apartment to go to the station.”

Sammy flipped Lily off. She winked at him.

“Yeah, he’s fine. Just slept in. Unprofessional as always, am I right?…He was in such a rush he must’ve just forgotten to text you...Yeah, no problem. Bye.”

“ _Really?_ ” Sammy said as soon as Lily hung up.

“That call was live on the air, by the way,” Lily said.

Sammy groaned.

“Oh, come on, Sammy. What would staying home accomplish? Huh? Do you really think staying in bed is going to make you feel better?”

“I just—”

“It’s not. You’re just going to dwell and mope. You know what _is_ going to make you feel better? Going to the station and doing your dumb little show with Ben.”

Sammy sighed. He knew she was right, but he wasn’t about to admit that out loud.

“You better hurry,” Lily said. “Ben and the listeners think you’re on your way.”

As Lily left the kitchen she paused at Sammy’s chair and placed a hand on Sammy’s shoulder—a tentative, fleeting gesture, but comforting all the same. Once she was gone, Sammy took a deep breath, tied up his newly cut hair, and prepared himself for another day.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
